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Vatican City, Sep 14, 2016 / 02:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors have been invited to address the trainings for new Catholic bishops held at the Vatican.

Commission members would address the training sessions for new bishops held by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and another training for new bishops held by the Congregation for Bishops, the commission said in a Sept. 12 press release.

The anti-abuse commission will also address a meeting of the Congregation for the Clergy. Commission members have also been invited to address the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and the Congregation for Consecrated Life.

In February 2016, Holy See spokesman Father Federico Lombardi criticized media reports he said falsely claimed the Vatican is telling new bishops they don’t have to report sex abuse.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met in Rome Sept. 5-11 for its plenary assembly and for working group meetings on guidelines, healing and care, education, formation, theology and spirituality, canonical and civil norms.

The meetings focused on updates for current projects and developing draft proposals for Pope Francis.

The commission plans to present to Pope Francis a template for guidelines to safeguard and protect children, adolescents and young adults.

“These initiatives are part of the Commission’s effort to be of service to the Holy Father by placing their expertise at the disposition of local churches and church leaders,” the commission said. “Commission members have also been invited to give talks and take part in various conferences and workshops on all five continents.”

The plenary assembly included members’ reports on the progress of education programs at the local level and at the Vatican. These programs aim to provide the commission’s help to local churches and church leaders.

Commission members have held talks and workshops in Australia’s Archdiocese of Melbourne, in the United States for Safe Environment and Victims’ Assistance Coordinators, and the Anglophone Safeguarding Conference held in Italy.

Other talks and workshops have been held in South Africa, in the Philippines, in Colombia and other parts of the world.

The commission’s recent meetings heard a suggestion from survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a priest who asked that there be a Day of Prayer for abuse victims.

Pope Francis has also asked national bishops’ conferences to choose an appropriate day to pray for survivors and victims of sex abuse.

“The Commission was happy to learn that many Bishops Conferences have already taken steps to enact the proposal,” the group said. “The Commission believes that prayer is one part of the healing process for survivors and the community of believers.”

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Washington D.C., Sep 14, 2016 / 03:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called current appeals to religious freedom “hypocrisy,” one archbishop rebuked his statement as “reckless” and ignorant.

“These statements painting those who support religious freedom with the broad brush of bigotry are reckless and reveal a profound disregard for the religious foundations of his own work,” Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said.

Archbishop Lori chairs the U.S. bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty and made his comments Tuesday in reaction to a recent statement by the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Martin R. Castro.

The commission had released its report “Peaceful Coexistence: reconciling non-discrimination principles with religious liberties” last week. The report was in the works for three years, exploring the conflicts between anti-discrimination laws and religious exemptions from those laws.

One example of that conflict might be Christian owners of a bakery who decline to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, despite a state’s anti-discrimination laws. Or it could be a parochial school choosing to make employment decisions based on a person’s religious beliefs and conduct.

Or, in a high-profile case, a religious order like the Little Sisters of the Poor might refuse out of conscience to have contraceptives covered in the health plans of their employees, and thus be accused of discriminating against those employees.

Regarding these conflicts, Chairman Castro, a Democrat and Obama appointee, issued a particularly strong statement against many appeals to religious freedom today.

“The phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance,” he said.

He added that “today, as in past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws.”

Archbishop Lori called Castro's comparison of today’s religious leaders with yesterday’s segregationists “shocking.”

“He makes the shocking suggestion that Catholic, evangelical, orthodox Jewish, Mormon, and Muslim communities are comparable to fringe segregationists from the civil rights era,” the archbishop said.

Faith leaders have a proud tradition of supporting the cause of civil rights in the U.S., Archbishop Lori insisted. “Can we imagine the civil rights movement without Rev. Martin Luther King, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel?” he asked.

That tradition continues today, he added.

“Today, Catholic priests, religious and laity can be found walking the neighborhood streets of our most struggling communities in places abandoned by a 'throwaway culture' that has too often determined that quick profits matter more than communities,” he said.

“We are there offering education, health care, social services, and hope, working to serve as the 'field hospital' Pope Francis has called us to be.”

“Rest assured, if people of faith continue to be marginalized, it is the poor and vulnerable, not the Chairman and his friends, who will suffer,” Archbishop Lori maintained.

“Peaceful Coexistence,” released last week, sided with anti-discrimination protections when they are in a perceived conflict with religious freedom exemptions, and asks that religious exemptions be as narrow as possible.

“Civil rights protections ensuring nondiscrimination, as embodied in the Constitution, laws, and policies, are of preeminent importance in American jurisprudence,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, “religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon these civil rights,” it added.

Furthermore, the report recommended that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act be amended, which could mean a massive shift in religious freedom jurisprudence.

The act was passed in 1993 – with a 97-3 vote in the U.S. Senate – after the Supreme Court ruled in Employment Division v. Smith that a person’s religiously motivated actions were not protected when they conflicted with existing law.

Thus, RFRA created a process to determine whether a religiously-motivated action could be exempt from federal law. The law must not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the government can “demonstrate” that it is “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means” of doing so.

The Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that Hobby Lobby, a closely-held for-profit corporation run by the Green family, was protected under the law.

In response last week, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights insisted that only “individuals and religious institutions” and not businesses could be protected under the law, “and only to the extent that they do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections against status-based discrimination.”

States should follow suit with their own RFRA-type laws, the report added.

Two commissioners dissented from the majority ruling. One, Gail Heriot, said that “the Commission majority takes a complex subject and tries to make it simple – far too simple. Not many legal or constitutional issues come down to good guys vs. bad guys.”

She issued a sharp rebuke of Chairman Castro’s statement on the “hypocrisy” of religious freedom being supposedly used to discriminate against others.  

“In some ways, I envy anyone who can dismiss those who disagree with him as mere hypocrites,” Heriot said of Castro.

“Does Chairman Castro really believe that the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose case is currently before the Supreme Court, are just a bunch of hypocrites? Does he believe that they are making up their concern over being compelled to finance their employees' contraception? Does he think they really just want to save money?”

The chair also “inexplicably associates statutes like the RFRA with 'Christian supremacy,'” she continued.

However, “RFRA protects people of all faiths. Indeed, it is the adherents to less common religions – Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, and Bahá’ís – that usually derive the most protection from RFRA and RFRA-style laws. Their political clout may be otherwise too weak to influence legislation.”

Religious charities should be exempt from non-discrimination laws because they are not even discriminating, Archbishop Lori said.

“We do not seek to impose our morality on anyone, but neither can we sacrifice it in our own lives and work,” he said. “The vast majority of those who speak up for religious liberty are merely asking for the freedom to serve others as our faith asks of us. We ask that the work of our institutions be carried out by people who believe in our mission and respect a Christian witness.”

Ultimately, the future of a pluralistic society is at stake, Archbishop Lori warned.

“In a pluralistic society, there will be institutions with views at odds with popular opinion,” he said. “The Chairman's statement suggests that the USCCR does not see the United States as a pluralistic society. We respect those who disagree with what we teach. Can they respect us?”

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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Ads appearing around the country "calling for taxpayer funding of abortion in the name of the Catholic faith" are "deceptive," "extreme" and promote "abortion as if it were a social good," said New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan.

The abortion advocacy organization Catholics for Choice placed full-page ads Sept. 12 in the print editions of more than 20 local and national publications, including Politico, the Nation, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Dallas Morning News and La Opinion.

The group "is not affiliated with the Catholic Church in any way," said Cardinal Dolan in a Sept. 14 statement as the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities. "It has no membership, and clearly does not speak for the faithful. It is funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control."

Years ago, the U.S. bishops said the group, formerly called Catholics for a Free Choice, had "no affiliation, formal or otherwise, with the Catholic Church."

"As the U.S. Catholic bishops have stated for many years," Cardinal Dolan said, "the use of the name 'Catholic' as a platform to promote the taking of innocent human life is offensive not only to Catholics, but to all who expect honesty and forthrightness in public discourse."

"The organization rejects and distorts Catholic social teaching -- and actually attacks its foundation," he continued. "As Pope Francis said this summer to leaders in Poland, 'Life must always be welcomed and protected ... from conception to natural death. All of us are called to respect life and care for it."

Catholics for Choice said in a news release that its "Abortion in Good Faith" campaign was a multiyear effort to overturn the federal Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds for virtually all Medicaid abortions.

Cardinal Dolan said the group's "extreme ads promote abortion as if it were a social good. But abortion kills the most defenseless among us, harms women, and tears at the heart of families."

"Pushing for public funding would force all taxpaying Americans to be complicit in the violence of abortion and an industry that puts profit above the well-being of women and children," he said, adding that the abortion group is pitting "the needs of pregnant women against those of their unborn children."

"This is a false choice. Catholics and all people of goodwill are called to love them both," Cardinal Dolan said. "Consider supporting local pregnancy help centers, which do incredible work caring for mothers and children alike in a manner consistent with true social justice and mercy."

In Minnesota, where Catholics for Choice placed one of its ads in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the state's largest daily newspaper, the state Catholic conference said the campaign, "woefully misrepresents the noble Catholic social justice tradition."

The campaign, by Catholics for Choice, "disregards the need to defend vulnerable human life in all its stages -- a principle at the core of authentic social justice," said the Sept. 12 statement by the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state's bishops.

The ad in the Star Tribune quoted Heather Hirsch, a cancer researcher and a mother from the Twin Cities suburb of Cottage Grove: "I believe in my Catholic faith and I have faith in others to make the right choices for themselves."

Others featured in the ad campaign are Lauren Barbato, a graduate student and writer from Newark, New Jersey; Kathy Ryg, a former Illinois state legislator, mother of four and grandmother of eight from Vernon Hills, Illinois; John Noble, a student and community organizer from Des Moines, Iowa; and Gloria Romero Roses, a business owner, mother and former congressional candidate from Southwest Ranches, Florida.

In its statement, the Minnesota Catholic Conference said, "If there is a desire to help a woman in need who is facing an unplanned pregnancy, the solution as a society is to get her the resources and support she needs to care for her child -- not help her dispose of it."

The conference added, "The ad itself makes no effort to ground its claims in any authoritative source of the Catholic faith, which is rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and is proclaimed by the church. It fails to do so because the actual teachings of the Catholic faith embrace a consistent ethic of life from conception to natural death, and categorically condemn abortion as an act of violence against the most innocent and defenseless among us."

It also suggested Catholics respond to the ad by giving support to one of the state's pregnancy resource centers, which "care for both mothers and children in a manner consistent with true social justice."

In other reaction, pro-life lawyer Helen Alvare, co-founder of Women Speak for Themselves, said she "has decades of experience" with Catholics for Choice's "attempts to be provocative in order to attract free media."

The group is "therefore often seen in the media, yet (is) not much of a factor in the pro-life debate on the ground," she said in a statement sent by email to Catholic News Service Sept. 13.

"They have no members and no grass-roots work. Unlike the Catholic Church and other pro-life activists," she added, Catholics for Choice "provides no help for pregnant women or post-aborted women or children."

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